Covenant Baldwin workshops for spill victims start Sunday

ORANGE BEACH, Alabama -- The first of three Baldwin workshops that will use a Pepsi Gulf Coast grant to help residents deal with the psychological effect of the BP oil spill and economic downturn starts Sunday in Orange Beach, organizers said.

Covenant Hospice will present the workshop on strength and resilience skills from 1 to 5 p.m. The session will be at Beach CITE Studios in SanRoc Cay Marina and Shopping Center at 27267 Perdido Beach Blvd., Suite 202.

Covenant Hospice was one of three local agencies to receive grants through the Pepsi Refresh the Gulf Coast program. The grants were intended to provide money for projects to help recovery from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon spill.

Covenant and Ecumenical Ministries of Baldwin County will each receive $25,000. The Daphne accounting firm of Byer, Byer and Associates will receive $5,000.

The Ecumenical Ministries grant will be used to help families with food and other assistance. Byer, Byer and Associates will help residents file claims for losses.

The Covenant grant will be used for counseling programs in Mobile, Daphne, Orange Beach and other locations.

Baldwin County sessions are also scheduled Dec. 1 and 8 in Foley, Jackie Crews, a Covenant development manager, said. The workshops will include discussions on dealing with stress and loss for adults and children, she said.

"We work with many people going through bereavement and in a lot of respects what people are going through right now, the loss of a way of life, loss of a job, is similar what they feel with the loss of a loved one," Crews said. "We saw this as a way to reach out and try to help the community."

Children taking part will receive butterfly bags, which include materials selected to help young people deal with loss and the grieving process, she said.

The Orange Beach session is a single workshop while the workshops in Foley will be in two sessions, Crews said.

All sessions will include talks on how to overcome adversity. The workshop is free and open to the public. Participants are asked to call Ashley Dennis at 251-626-5255 [guy: cq: ]to register or for more information.

The deadline to register for the Orange Beach workshop is Thursday. Anyone wanting to take part in the Dec. 1 workshop should make reservations by Nov. 26. The registration deadline for the Dec. 8 event is Dec. 3, Crews said.

The Dec. 1 workshop will also include a talk by Drexel Gilbert, a former WKRG news anchor is the owner and principal consultant for Dynamic Impact. The company provides image consulting, motivational seminars and life coaching.